title: Incorporating severity of illness into estimates of likelihood ratios.
abstract: Although severity of illness may affect the usefulness of a diagnostic test, most previous work has considered test performance only in the dichotomous situation where the target disorder is considered present or absent. In this paper, a clinical example is provided and two methods presented whereby illness severity may be incorporated into the determination of likelihood ratios for a diagnostic test. The use of this approach is that given a test result, a clinician may determine the post-test probability of all levels of the illness in the patient under study.
authors.affiliation: Audie Murphy Memorial Veterans Administration Hospital, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lichtenstein
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kiefe
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000097:blood* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004909:Erythrocyte Indices; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011336:Probability